There is an ever increasing requirement for more precise and comprehensive land survey maps from title insurance companies, lending institutions and property buyers. Traditional land survey maps generated from conventional surveying and mapping techniques are very limited in both the amount of information provided and the method of presenting the information. For example, the typical land survey map provided for a particular piece or parcel of property is currently limited to illustrating the boundary lines of the property and the location of certain man-made and naturally occurring features located on the property. The boundary lines are usually identified with reference to certain measurements of latitude and longitude that are incomprehensible to the average property buyer. Thus, the buyer has a difficult time correlating the information provided on the survey map with the actual physical features of the land. In addition to the limited amount of information provided, the process of using conventional surveying instruments to locate natural and man-made features in order to generate a land survey map is a tedious and time consuming task that is subject to errors and omissions, thereby increasing the difficulty title insurance companies and lending institutions have in establishing insurance and lending risk potentials for a particular piece of property.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for generating a comprehensive land survey map that includes detailed image data to illustrate the visible attributes of the property and survey data to illustrate the invisible attributes of the proper such as boundary lines, right-of-ways and easements. It is a further object of the invention to generate the comprehensive land survey map in the form of a digital database that can be readily accessed.